Protection of Classics is a provision of

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

law that is included in the

Copyright Act Copyright Act (with its variations) is a stock short title used for legislation in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States relating to the copyright. The Bill for an Act with this short t ...

s of the Nordic countries. According to this stipulation, it is forbidden to treat a work of art in a manner which violates cultural interests after the death of the author. This concerns also cases in which the copyright is no longer in force or has never existed, that is, material in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

. The Copyright Acts of the Nordic countries resemble each other because important legislation used to be drafted jointly in these countries and that applied also to the copyright act preparation during the 1930s–1950s. In most Nordic countries, there have been cases in which the prohibition has been imposed. Several cases exist in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

, two in

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

, and one in

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

. For instance in Denmark, it was ruled that also the

Gospels Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the second century AD the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported. In this sen ...

are protected by this paragraph of the Copyright Act. In Finland, several translated children's books (including ''

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (also known as ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English Children's literature, children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics university don, don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a ...

'') were banned in May 1962 because of the poor quality and clandestine abridgement of the translations. After appeals, the

Supreme Court of Finland The Supreme Court of Finland ( , abbreviated as ''KKO''; , abbreviated as ''HD''), located in Helsinki, is the court of last resort for cases within the private law of Finland (that is, civil and criminal cases). The Court's counterpart is the ...

upheld the prohibition issued by the Finnish Ministry of Education.

References

Copyright law in Europe Nordic law Copyright infringement of fictional characters Personality rights Unofficial adaptations Great Books {{Europe-law-stub

See also

References